2 Killed, 1 Hospitalized In Gas Leak

Police Seek Source Of Fatal Fumes In Lake Forest

Two women were killed and a man was clinging to life late Monday after carbon monoxide fumes filled a Lake Forest home, according to authorities.

The dead were identified as 76-year-old Gunvati Kapoor and her 56-year-old nurse, Raveica Luca, according to Lake County Coroner Barbara Richardson. They were pronounced dead at the scene at 2:40 p.m., Richardson said.

Lake Forest police and fire officials were called to the home in the 1200 block of Lawrence Avenue at approximately 12:15 p.m. Monday, according to Lake Forest Deputy Police Chief Gary Yandura.

Authorities said the man found alive is Kamal J. Kapoor, 53, who lives in the home. He was airlifted to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where as of late Monday he was listed in very critical condition, according to a hospital spokesman.

Gunvati Kapoor was the man's mother, Richardson said.

An employee of Kamal Kapoor had gone to the house for a noon appointment but could not raise anybody and called police, according to Yandura. When officers arrived and searched the area outside the home, they saw a woman lying motionless on a bed through a first-floor window in the back of the house, said Yandura.

After breaking into the house, he said, they discovered that the woman was dead; the other victims were located on the second floor.

Yandura said investigators don't yet know the source of the leak.

"We have heating contractors looking into the heating unit, but we're not ruling anything out," he said. "The level of carbon monoxide was extremely high, something like 400 parts per million, certainly enough to kill a human being."

Yandura said that the first two officers on the scene and two firefighters were treated and released from an area hospital after being overcome in the home.

The two-story, rust-colored brick Cape Cod house with gray-painted wood trim is in Arbor Ridge, a 10-year-old subdivision consisting of 65 traditional-style homes each on about 1 1/4-acre lots and each worth more than $1 million, according to neighbors.

After paramedics took away the victims Monday afternoon, several police cars remained parked in front of the house. The second-story windows were open, presumably to air out the carbon monoxide. A 1998 Mercedes Benz was in the garage. Two neighborhood kids hung out in front of the house, watching the proceedings.

A woman who lives two doors west of the Kapoor house said the family, like many others in the subdivision, stayed "very to themselves." She said that while the neighborhood isn't tight-knit--there's an annual block party and ornament exchange--hardly anyone ever had any contact with the Kapoors except for an occasional wave across the lawn.

From what the neighbor, who did not give her name, said, the Kapoors entertained extended family at the home and a steady stream of relatives "came and went."